HOW THE ILLUSION BEGAN

I lived these illusions for fifteen years. I believed totally that my life would be intolerable without cigarettes.

 

	Even, to-day I will tear a cigarette into it's different parts, lay it on a table and then just stare at it objectively and without
emotion and try to answer the question that haunts all smokers

How could that thing just lying there
 on the table cause such fear and trouble in my life?

How could I believe that without it, my life would be intolerable ? 

Why did it take me so long to stop smoking and.... why did I believe it would be so difficult ?

A lifeless cigarette......

 
..............and there it lies on the table. Totally lifeless.

Powerless.

Dead. 

Totally oblivious to it's surroundings and to the pain and turbulence it causes to people's lives.

When I was giving up smoking, every now and then I would take out a packet - empty it out on a table and then one-by-one with full awareness and concentration, simply break it in two, crumble it up into a nothingness and then dump it into a bin.........

A SIMPLE QUESTION

May I ask you a question?

How did you feel ? - be honest here - what thoughts and feelings went through your mind when you read that ?

Did you think: "What a waste" .......followed maybe by a slight feeling of deprivation.....maybe even angry.

"How dare he tear them up. I could have smoked them. Pure waste"  

Did you feel, in some way that your pleasure was threatened ?

But hold on a minute. Let me stop you here. 

Let me draw your attention back to the torn-up cigarette lying on the table. 

Really look at it. 

It is dead, inanimate, lifeless substance. That's what a cigarette is in it's essence if you really look at it objectively and without judgment.  

Powerless, inanimate material.

It has no life or power of it's own. It can't sing or dance or solve your problems for you. Of itself, it can do nothing for you.

Suppose I got a plastic bag and tore it up and destroyed it - would you have any feelings at all about that ? 

Would you feel deprived, angry? Would you feel that your pleasure had been threatened ? Of course not.

THE GREAT ILLUSION

Lifeless, powerless.

The point is that the real power or the real pleasure that we believe the cigarette has, does not come from the cigarette ( of course not - it is dead, inanimate material ) but comes from ourselves - from the feelings and beliefs that we have unconsciously attached and linked to cigarettes.

This happens very subtly.......

Your body is fine and complete before you begin to smoke.

You are able to get on with all aspects of your life without giving the slightest thought to cigarettes EVEN if everybody around you, like your parents are smoking.

When you were young did you feel your day was ruined if you could not smoke?

Did you feel nervous, uncomfortable or unable to concentrate because you could not smoke? 

Of course not.

Your life went on perfectly normally as a non-smoker.

 

KEY IDEA

Before you were a smoker, you were able to get on with all aspects of your life without even giving a thought to cigarettes even if everyone around you was smoking.

Then, one day you decide to smoke. To experiment. You force nicotine into your body. 

You smoke. 

Your body responds by either coughing or if you smoke too much by producing physical sensations of sickness or a dizzy feeling. 

This is simply our bodies setting off alarm signals - trying to tell us we are putting an unwelcome poisonous substance into our body.

BUT we ignore it.

We keep on smoking, because deep down..... we are convinced there must be something in it...... and although we will swear that we are not hooked, " I can give up anytime I want - I just don't want to do it now" - we continue on.

But very soon we begin to realize we NEED that next cigarette. 

We get a certain feeling ....... a certain emptiness ........ a desire ......... that we feel a cigarette will fill.

We feel uneasy as if we are lacking something ......... 

We reach for a cigarette - and within seconds, fresh nicotine is supplied and this unexplained hunger or emptiness is filled.

We feel relief and a great pleasure that that empty feeling is gone.